British politics is falling apart – the Tories are to blame, but Labour is also a shambles

The wreckers in the Conservative Party are willing to destroy everything in their path in pursuit of a Brexit with an uncertain outcome

I get the sense Boris and Co believe the world sees them as boldly striking out on their own, showing those old British qualities of independence, bravery and brio. Actually they look like a crowd of incompetents who can’t make up their minds about anything

The disintegration of British politics continues apace. We are still in the phase where the pillars of their political system – a mighty executive, party discipline, respected institutions, a ruthless sense of the national interest and a shared sense of national identity – are crumbling. They will all probably have to crumble further before British politics puts itself back together.

There are times now watching the parade of chancers, weaklings and half-wits puff themselves up and talk themselves out, seeing its parliament populated by factions rather than identifiable parties, when the UK resembles some Ruritanian semi-democracy. Surely the bushy-moustachioed strongman who refers to himself in the third person can’t be far off.

It is the deep unseriousness with which this historically serious issue is being treated by many of the protagonists that illuminates most the irresponsibility of it all. Half the time MPs – and front bench spokespeople and ministers – have demonstrably no idea what they are talking about.

Nobody knows what the single market is, said Dominic Cummings, architect of the Leave campaign. Three years later much of the British political class still seems to have no idea.

Irish officials say quietly that the level of ignorance about the facts of the EU’s institutional arrangements in London astonishes them.

The denial of facts and realities at this stage is astounding. My 12-year-old daughter discusses Brexit in class, and is assembling a project on it. She has a firmer grasp of the issue than most of the people I see talking about it on the BBC. (Though she has, admittedly, had to endure very many tedious conversations with her father on the subject, as you can imagine).

Brexit has torn up the conventions moulded by hundreds of years of serious politics in London. The wreckers in the Conservative Party are willing to destroy everything in their path – British institutions, diplomacy, their country’s international reputation, the compact between generations – in pursuit…

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